The SoapVox

Joe Wikert got a loaner Sony Reader from the company dudes, and did a review a review about his experience with it.

He lists up the cons and pros as follows:

Cons:
It’s too expensive.
It’s monochrome
No wireless
Content only through Sony

Pros:
Spectacular readability.
Handy
Portable
Great battery life.

In the end, he thinks that the cons outweigh the pros…and I have to agree with him. I use a now-old Ipaq 1915 as my portable ebook reader, and it shares two of its cons with Sony’s Reader…the price (it was around $400USDlls back when I bought it) and the lack of wireless. In the case of the ipaq, that last one can be fixed with more money, by buying a CF wireless card, but…it’s expensive enough as it is! Of course, there’s newer ipaqs with wireless and probably even for less cash than mine was, but…in my case, the cons of my ipaq are not bad enough to make me want to get a new one, at least not yet. Oh, and the battery life of the ipaq, at least as a reader, sucks…I can only read for about 6hr a day…and I usually read more than that.

From the moment the Sony Reader was announced I’ve wanted one…until I realized that the only way to read the ebooks I buy from baen.com and others is to convert them to BBeB format with the Sony supplied software…which only runs on MS-ware…which I don’t use nor want to use.

So…somebody know of an e-paper reader that can natively read at least txt/htm/rtf? That costs no more than 200 bucks? that can stay on for, at least, 12hr between charges? With wireless? I would actually learn to live with a monochrome display, as long as it was crystal clear like the Sony’s display.

So…what’s your ideal ebook reader?

Technorati Tags: sony reader, ebooks, electronic books

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